After a Sacred Search conference in which I had laid out essential character traits to look for in a future spouse, a group of six men asked a question. Five of them were convinced by what I had said; one wasn’t, and he’s the one who asked the question in the form of several statements: […]
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Plenty of research has come out about porn’s effects on men—erectile dysfunction, making your brain less attracted to your wife, distorting a man’s view of women overall, etc. One I haven’t seen listed, though, is anger. Men who regularly give in to porn often have a lot of anger toward their wives. I’m not a […]
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Jason (not his real name) is one of the over fifty-percent of men who struggle mightily with pornography. It was causing him to miss out on life and regularly be angry with his wife (an often-ignored “secret” is that porn is cultivating an entire generation of angry husbands). One time, after an hours-long binge in […]
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I (Patrick) have a bit of a reputation for running out of gas, perhaps because I once read an article that said gas pumps have more germs than a toilet seat. I don’t know how many germs that is, but it’s enough for me not to want to touch either one too often. Or maybe […]
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One of the most common questions I get about my book for singles, The Sacred Search, which gives a lot of advice about what to look for and what to avoid when choosing someone to marry, is “What if you can’t find a person like the one you describe?” Singles who ask this question, and […]
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Perhaps you feel crushed with the burden of providing for a family. Maybe you feel exhausted trying to please a persistently disappointed mate. It might be that you feel buried in duty, unglamorous tasks, anonymity, and the terrifying reality that when you look ahead, you don’t see anything changing for a long time. You pray […]
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A model in the 2013 issue of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition called herself a “grandma” because she was appearing in her ninth consecutive issue. It’s apparently unusual for a model to do that kind of modeling for nearly a decade. Think about this—nine years and she’s a “grandma.” My wife and I have been married […]
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One of the least productive, and indeed most destructive mental exercises in marriage is to spend any time asking ourselves a spiritually dangerous question: “Did I marry the right person?” This question saps energy from something that can be done—focusing on taking a less than ideal situation to a better place—at the cost of solving […]
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Throughout the nine months of our engagement, Lisa and I made many plans, as any engaged couple does. We talked about missions, family, serving God—you name it. It was an intense time, and we often prayed, “Lord, wherever you want to take us, however you want to use us, we’re all yours.” Of course, we […]
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I don’t know if anything has ever touched me as much as when my oldest daughter returned from her first year of college and explained how she got through some lonely moments. She told me she’d go into the bookstore (it was a Christian college), find one of my books, look at my picture on […]
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